As promised in my last post, I'll tell more about the Finlandia now. I had a mini vacation in Finland, which involved taking her there and back. A bit of additional excitement was added when we boarded with a car, which is something I had never done before, and during the return trip I had a look at the changes that were made.
Finlandia was some 15-20 minutes late arriving in Tallinn before our boarding, which made us wonder. Her arrival to Helsinki afterwards, however, was on time. She was going full speed and rolling quite heavily.
Viking XPRS shortly before freeing her spot for Finlandia
Finlandia slowly coming in
Suspicious dents I
Suspicious dents II
Feed me, master!
Yum!
Full speed ahead
Although the crossing speed was even faster due to the delay, it didn't feel even close to as quick as on the Star or the Superstar.
Star backing into Helsinki West harbour, seen from the cardeck
Nice close view during disembarkation
Suspicious dents explained?
Before the return journey I saw a sign in the terminal explaining that the schedules are temporarily changed due to gangway repair works in Port of Tallinn. I felt a bit silly for not having thought of that reason earlier; some time ago Finlandia's freshly completed (finally, two years after her arrival) gangway collapsed shortly before being attached to the Viking XPRS (who was using it due to stormy weather), killing one worker. The collapsed part has been removed and the spot remains unusable until fixed, leaving Finlandia "homeless" once more - as if it was a curse.
Baltic Queen coming in some 30 minutes early
Us departing, caught by Jani Nousiainen from Baltic Queen
Turning around
Star coming in
Harbour view as we left
Before
After
The changes on board were smaller than I expected, but still noticeable and the ship really seemed better. Bar Nosturi is still on just two decks, but the store underneath that occupies the third deck of the big window was made significantly larger and more efficient, putting everything one would expect to find in a ship store in one place. Before the refit there was a separate cosmetics & perfume store on deck 8; now it's a food store selling seemingly gourmet stuff, called the Pop Up Shop.
Another nice addition is a new bar, named Paja, in a somewhat remote location on the port side of the ship. It almost went unnoticed; before the refit there were meeting rooms.
Despite being somewhat remote, it was still packed along with the rest of the ship on the Friday evening departure.
Speaking of meeting rooms, those were moved to deck 6 and there's now quite many of them in an area that was formerly just cabins. On the packed Friday evening departure, those rooms were nicely adapted into a huge playing area for kids.
The new information desk, moved into a separate room opposite to the big store as well as its former self. My intervention there was not nearly as rude as the crew members' faces suggest.
To my great disappointment, the ex-pool was completely removed from the sundeck, making it feel empty and bleak.
One does not simply get lost on the Finlandia - Another feature I like a lot remained in tact, as expected.
As well as the neat selfie-mirror
Meanwhile on the side of the ship
Not that speedy this time
While approaching Tallinn and waiting for XPRS to clear her spot for us, I took some more photos of the departing ferries, which means that I managed to photograph every Tallinn-Helsinki ferry during one crossing.
Among others, the Superstar.
The visibility was quite awful and this turned out the best I got of Sea Wind. She has been moving cargo between Tallinn and Vuosaari since early January.
Viking XPRS
That's what happens when you eat too many cars
Finlandia's cursed spot, which she's totally not using. During the return journey, which was a little longer because of the lack of a usable harbour spot, the announcements on board called this "technical difficulties".
Imagine it's 1994. You're about to depart from Tallinn on board a fancy, unsinkable ship with a great symbolic value. Perhaps you're very excited, perhaps a bit sad to be leaving. Are you going to work, to visit friends, on a vacation, maybe to attend an event? Maybe you just closely missed the departure due to some frustrating inconvenience. Or you just boarded and found everything you'd expect to find - restaurants, stores, a night club. Are you stunned by the beauty of the ship or is it something so usual you don't even notice it?
The ship departs, hours pass. What are you doing now? Are you enjoying the show in the nightclub? Or perhaps in your warm cabin bed resting after a long hard day, maybe a few drinks at the bar? Maybe you're doing your job just like the rest of the crew? The weather is stormy and the ship rolls heavily, the sun decks are closed and even if they weren't, they're definitely not the place you want to be right now. Even without the help of a drink or two it's hard to walk straight. Perhaps the rolling worries you, or are you so used to life on the sea that no little storm scares you? Suddenly the ship lists heavily. You fall out of your bed, you find it very difficult to not fall over wherever you're standing. The chair you're sitting on slides away, taking you along. Maybe you do fall over, maybe you manage to grab something and hold on. People around you, as well as yourself, realize that something is wrong. People are screaming and trying to run, some are apathetic, some are doing everything to prevent others from escaping. Many are injured, you might be as well. Water is pouring from toilets, wetting the floors and feeding the panic. The list keeps getting worse, you try hard to make your way upstairs, which gets more and more difficult by the minute. Maybe you're stuck in your cabin with nothing to use to climb up and out of the door, and you realize that your only option is to go down with the ship. Perhaps you're one of the lucky ones to make it on the sun deck. It's cold and windy, the waves are very high and you see that you have to climb over the railing and stand on the side of the ship - the ship has turned to her side. You notice people launching liferafts. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to join them, maybe not. Do you jump in the freezing water right away or try to stay with the ship for as long as you can? The ship blasts her final horn; it's a long, long blast. Before it ends, her funnel sinks in the sea. You see lights from liferafts and other ships and a guy flashing his camera. You're standing on the bottom of the glorious cruiseferry who will pull you down with her, probably for good, if you don't leave her right away. Now you're floating in the freezing water, swimming, looking for a liferaft or something to hold on to. Maybe you're already in a liferaft. The waves are making it difficult to see what's going on around you, throwing you around so that it's hard to get anywhere. There's a lot of water in your liferaft from the heavy waves, mixed with some vomit from the severely seasick people in your liferaft, probably including yourself. The beautiful cruiseferry that brought you here is nowhere to be found. Maybe you witnessed her final minutes from your raft, maybe you were too busy saving your own life. The first ships have arrived on the scene. You see one guy climbing up a ladder on the side of an enormous white Silja Line cruiseferry. At this point you're probably too sick, tired, weak, frozen, injured to do anything. Maybe you're lucky to be one of the first to be picked up by a helicopter, maybe you've had to wait for so long and you see the sky slowly getting lighter as a new day dawns. Are you even alive? Even when you're finally being pulled up towards a helicopter, you're still not safe. What if the rescue equipment of the helicopter lets you down and you fall straight back into the freezing water? Maybe you're once again lucky to be safely on the helicopter. Maybe it takes you to one of the nearby cruiseferries, maybe straight to the shore. You're being taken care of and constantly bombarded with questions while finally starting to grasp what has just happened. Eventually you learn that you were one of a few to survive.
Maybe you missed the fateful departure or never even intended to be there. You woke up in the morning from your comfortable bed to hear the news. Is it some kind of a joke? Surely it can't be real?
Unfortunately, it was all real exactly 20 years ago, when the glorious cruiseferry Estonia, a symbol of the regained independence of the namesake country, was tragically lost at sea along with the majority of her passengers, becoming a synonym of the worst peacetime disaster to occur in the Baltic Sea.
1980 - 1994
The disaster led to many changes in ship safety and the order of handling such situations. Most Estonians lost someone or knew someone who lost someone that night.
It occurred nearly two years before I came to this world and I'm not the result of any incredible survivals; no one I'm related to was lost either. Still, even years later the event has affected me deeply. I've read countless stories, watched hours and hours of related videos and movies, which enabled me to write this post in the first place; whenever I travel, I feel completely secure boarding my ship, I trust it fully. I'm sure the people boarding the Estonia before her final departure were mostly feeling the same. Of all the horrible shipwrecks, this one happened to a ship of my favourite kind, a Baltic Sea cruiseferry, a descendant of Finnjet. I don't even want to know what I would've felt, had I lived that night.
May the souls of the 852 people who were lost with the ship rest in peace.
It's been a while since I last blogged, and a lot has happened. I haven't had the time to write down everything in order so I'll try to do it now.
Lots of ferry related news have reached my ears recently, mostly unpleasant ones. It almost seems as if the companies are trying to beat each other by having more incidents.
First of all, Viking XPRS was having difficulties entering the port of Tallinn due to bad weather on 1st of December. A tugboat was assisting her, but soon the captain decided it was too dangerous and returned to the open sea to drift for the night. What caused some inconveniences was the fact that all cabins were sold out, but pillows and bed sheets were distributed and some of the crew, including the captain, kindly allowed people to stay in their cabins. Free food and drinks were also available. The ship returned to Tallinn early next morning and her next departure wasn't affected.
Viking XPRS
Then, Tallink took a turn on the 12th of December, when a ramp connecting two cardecks collapsed on Star while she was in Helsinki. One truck driver was injured. The accident cancelled all of her departures until next evening, but at some point she was allowed to return to Tallinn with no passengers to unload the cars on the 2nd cardeck. So, the old double ramp of Superfast ferries found an use again. Later on some more departures were cancelled for repairs, but as far as I understood the ramp is currently stationary as a temporary result. Tallink is working on restoring the ramp as it was before.
Star
Photo from the site, submitted to delfi.ee (not mine)
Ramp of Superfast
Three days later Amorella of Viking Line ran aground due to a blackout. The passengers and actually pretty much everyone following the event was very worried at first, since runninng aground can result in pretty much anything ranging from nothing to loss of the vessel. It was a lucky accident, because no one was injured, only a ballast tank was damaged and later on the ship continued to Mariehamn, where she dropped off her passengers and left to Rauma for repairs. Now she's back in service.
Amorella aground near Långnäs, slightly listed to starboard.
Some time later, Tallink struck again, when christmas schedules caused quite a mess at the check-in counter of Tallink's terminal in Tallinn. Superstar was exceptionally scheduled to depart 30 minutes before the Stockholm ferry, which meant that several thousand people had to check in during a very short period of time. The people to board Superstar were apparently given priority, but many didn't hear it and failed to board the ship in time. The ship didn't wait for them and they had to spend the night in Tallinn, returning to Finland next morning. Four of six check-in machines were out of order and the fifth one soon ran out of paper and nobody was sent to replace it.
Superstar
Earlier today a fire broke out in a cabin on King of Scandinavia of DFDS Seaways. It was put out in 15 minutes, but seven people, mostly crew, had to be taken to hospital by helicopter due to smoke inhalation. Two people have been arrested for arson and affray. So far it looks like a lucky accident, and hopefully she will make it in time for her next departure after an inspection and some cleaning.
King Seaways (shipspotting.com)
That means Tallink and Viking Line are leading with two incidents each, and DFDS has one for now. Let's see who strikes next. I know it's somewhat inappropriate to handle ferry accidents the way I do, afterall they're no good, but they're really exciting to follow as long as you're not involved and as long as no one dies.
Now to continue with something more cheerful - Christmas has passed, which means exciting times for local shipspotters. In the meanwhile Cinderella of Viking Line came to do cruises from Helsinki with a short stay in Tallinn, and she has now been doing them for two weeks.
Our day cruise to Helsinki is crawling very close, with less than a week remaining. I'll return to Tallinn on Viking Cinderella on the 2nd last time that it's possible.
Cinderella arriving for the first time
Silja Festival is also on the move. A few days ago she left Paljassaare and came to Old City harbour and now she's in St. Petersburg waiting to start her Baltic Sea cruise on the 2nd of January. She will visit Tallinn, then stay in Stockholm for two days and then visit Helsinki. Unfortunately for us, she will be in Stockholm when we're travelling, so we won't get a chance to take better photos of her.
Lefort was a warship of the Imperial Russian Navy, named after admiral Franz Lefort. She was a part of the Baltic fleet, and participated in the Crimean war.
After serving successfully for over twenty years, on the 22nd of September, 1857, she was sailing from Revel, now known as Tallinn, to Kronstadt, carrying the crew and their families. The sea was rough, and a gust of wind caused her to heel over and sink in only minutes, killing all 826 people on board. It was the deadliest shipwreck in the Baltic Sea until the sinking of Estonia almost 140 years later.
There is several theories about why she sank so fast. The ship's structures may have been weakened from carrying heavy loads and lack of proper maintenance. The cargo she was carrying may have been distributed poorly. Another theory says that the gun ports were open, letting in water when the ship listed.
On the 4th of May 2013, while searching for WW2 submarines, a group of divers found her wreck. It was quite well preserved. Remains of the people on board were found inside and on the wreck, which means that people probably tried to survive by climbing on the side of the heeled ship.
The ship I'm about to introduce you is special because she has been rebuilt entirely many times, the only thing that has stayed the same is the IMO number, which is used to identify a ship. Name: MSViking Saga
www.shipspotting.com
IMO number: 7827213 Built: 1980 Lenght: 145,2m Beam: 25,4m Draught: 5,5m Tonnage: 14,330 GT Type: Cruiseferry Speed: 21,3 knots Capacity: 2000 passengers, 426 cars Sister: Viking Song, now known as Regina Baltica
The Viking Saga, along with her sister Viking Song was one of the first genuine cruiseferries to follow Finnjet. Her design was heavily influenced by Finnjet as well. In 1979 - 1981 the traffic on Turku-Stockholm and Helsinki-Stockholm routes was increased a lot when both Viking Line and Silja Line put several new cruiseferries on the routes. Viking Saga was one of them, entering the Helsinki - Stockholm route and serving there for 6 years, until she was replaced by Olympia.
In 1986 she was rebuilt into a cruise ship, although she still kept her cardeck. She was renamed Sally Albatross and she was used for cruises on the Baltic Sea under the brand Sally Cruises.
In 1988 she was rebuilt again, more rooms were added from the cardeck and her outer appearance was changed remarkably, to a more streamlined and round appearance.
After the 1986 and 1988 refits her stats had changed:
She served as a cruise ship like that for two years.
In 1992, when she was docked in Sweden for a small interior reconstruction, a fire broke out. The sprinkler system was turned off for the docking, all water sources were dry and the watchman had just left for lunch. Since gas was used for the construction, extinction from inside the ship was very dangerous, and so the crew was evacuated and firefighting continued from outside the ship, which burned for three days. Luckily, no lives were lost. Here's a video about the fire.
And some photos of Sally Albatross after the fire. She was damaged beyond repair.
The remains were cut into pieces, and transported to Rauma, Finland, where the ship was rebuilt from the remains, leaving only the engines and the part of the hull below the waterline in tact. The new ship was longer and now a genuine cruise ship with no cardeck. Many sources count the result of this a new ship, but the IMO number and name remained the same. Most of the stats changed though:
After the new ship was ready, in 1992, she started doing Baltic Sea cruises similar to what she did before. In July she was used as a hotel and conference ship for Barcelona Summer Olympics. After the charter, she joined Silja Line's fleet, although her name and livery were kept the same.
In 1994 Sally Albatross ran aground near Porkkala. Her passengers were evacuated and she was left on the spot. Preparations to refloat her started immediately, but it proved to be difficult, taking over a month. It was once again a lucky accident, because no lives were lost.
After she was refloated and repaired, she was chartered to Norwegian Cruise Line until 2000 and renamed Leeward. She started doing Caribbean cruises in 1995.
In 2000 she was chartered to Star Cruises, renamed Superstar Taurus and used for cruises in Asia, until in 2001 the charter contract was broken, leaving her in Silja Line's fleet again. She sailed back to Europe and her interior was rebuilt for Baltic Sea cruises. She was then renamed Silja Opera and repainted to Silja Line's livery, and in 2002 she started cruising on Baltic Sea once again.
She was already infamous for all the accidents, and it was made worse when she collided with three ships in St. Petersburg, and a couple of months later with a Russian icebreaker. Therefore the cruises on her turned out to be unpopular and she was put up for sale.
In 2007, she was sold to Louis Cruise Lines and renamed Cristal. Ever since she has been doing Mediterranean cruises.
Finally, here's a before-and-after view of the same ship as she was built and as she is now.
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